News & Impact

Stay updated with JFCS activities in the community.

Rywka’s Diary: The Writings of a Jewish Girl from the Lodz Ghetto—first published by the JFCS Holocaust Center—has been awarded this year’s Historical Award by Polityka, Poland’s top newsmagazine.
The handwritten diary—miraculously discovered intact amidst the rubble at Auschwitz—is a moving account of the life and dreams of 14-year-old Polish girl Rywka Lipszyc. After more than 70 years in obscurity, the diary was finally published in 2014 and soon after became a worldwide success. The diary has gone on to be translated and published in 15 countries, including Poland.The award, initiated in 1959, is the oldest award in Poland… Read More

J Weekly

By Karen Galatz

The generation of Holocaust survivors may be passing, but thanks to a just-launched initiative in San Francisco, their testimonies will live on through their children and grandchildren.

Called the Next Generation Speakers Bureau, the initiative is the brainchild of Morgan Blum Schneider, director of Jewish Family and Children Services’ Holocaust Center. The bureau is designed to address the challenge of Holocaust education when the last of the survivors are gone.

“We want to ensure that the Holocaust remains a story of faces, not just a history of numbers,” said Alexis Herr, the Holocaust Center’s new associate director, who was hired with the specific task of leading the NGSB effort.

“I want to die with dignity.”
Nora is a client of Jewish Family and Children’s Services whose story and strength I find inspiring. She has not only survived the Holocaust, she’s outlived her husband and son. Now, at 93, she’s been diagnosed with cancer.
When Nora reached out to JFCS, she tearfully said she hadn’t spoken to anyone in two weeks and that getting around on her own was painful. With no living relatives and only a small fixed income to pay her bills, Nora needs our help.
“I was 17 years old when the Nazis took us from our… Read More

Plucked from the ashes of Auschwitz and published in 2014 by the JFCS Holocaust Center, Rywka’s Diary: The Writings of a Jewish Girl from the Lodz Ghetto has been an international sensation, sold alongside The Diary of Anne Frank. The tattered school diary written in Polish by 14-year-old Rywka Lipszyc has captivated readers around the world and has been translated into 15 languages. It is now being published in its native Polish tongue.
This month Rywka’s powerful words became available throughout Poland. The new and beautifully designed edition was published in partnership with Austeria Publishing House in collaboration with the… Read More

Twelve years ago, JFCS Executive Director, Dr. Anita Friedman, visited her father’s ancestral village in the Polish countryside. Since then she has returned to Gniewoszow multiple times and joins thousands of Jews who have traveled to Poland since the fall of communism. Friedman has built relationships with the local community and helped rededicate its Jewish cemetery as she grapples with her family’s lost homeland. She is also teaching teens in the Bay Area about this important history.

JFCS Executive Director, Dr. Anita Friedman, teaching teens from JFCS’ summer internship program about her family’s lost homeland in Poland.

JFCS is the leader in Holocaust education in Northern California, and thousands of students each year learn about the Holocaust and other genocides through the JFCS Holocaust Center.

Additionally, teens who participate in JFCS’ YouthFirst program also receive Holocaust education. Friedman recently taught teens participating in the YouthFirst summer internships about her family’s history in Gniewoszow, Poland.

The summer interns first had the chance to think about how their families’ traditions have shaped who they are as people, and then Friedman shared her family’s experiences during the Holocaust and her powerful story about returning to Gniewoszow. The students were able to see very clearly that her family history has directly informed her core values.